Xpenology or unraid

JJimmyJ

JJimmyJ

JJimmyJ

Associate
Joined
21 Jan 2010
Posts
567
Hi folks,
After some advice after my failed attempt to update my gen 8 microserver to xpenology 6.1
It didn't work (I believe I followed instructions to the letter), and now I have a crashed status. Luckily I have everything backed up, and drives still function, but obviously something has gone wrong.
Ordered 2 new drives so I have extra redundancy.
I'm debating whether to just start fresh and go on xpenology 6.2 or if unraid might be a better option as it may be better supported etc going forward. I like the dsm interface, does unraid offer the same? I sync certain folders on my pc to back up once I'm logged on (work docs etc). Does unraid offer similar?
I'm no expert in this area, but just want pics, videos, films etc backed up and be able to stream to my tv

Thanks
 
I've never tried Xpenology but went from Synology to UnRAID and in my opinion unRAID is far better!

The UI is quite easy to follow and I think you can try unRAID for free if memory serves!

I'm probably only using a tiny percentage of what it offers but does everything fine for me! (Plex, storage etc!)
 
StevieP said:
I've never tried Xpenology but went from Synology to UnRAID and in my opinion unRAID is far better!

The UI is quite easy to follow and I think you can try unRAID for free if memory serves!

I'm probably only using a tiny percentage of what it offers but does everything fine for me! (Plex, storage etc!)
Click to expand...

It does sound good. What do you run it on currently? I suppose one concern for me is the hardware, I only meet minimum requirements. If I got a licence I'd be annoyed if I suddenly couldn't update as my specs were too low (although that applies for most things anyway).
I really need to have a good mess around with the server, not even updated bios since I got it. It runs loud!
 
Mine is a Gen 8 Microserver but with an upgraded Xeon E31260L CPU and (I think) 16GB of RAM.

The issue I had with my Synology NAS (which I loved!) was the fact that Plex for example became unsupported!

The unRAID OS is great - although I gather quite a bit of stuff is probably quicker/more efficient using command line instructions but there seems to be a graphical UI for most programs! (I haven't got a clue about command line stuff!)

There is a dude in YouTube called Spaceinvader One who has done tutorials on all sorts of unRAID stuff thats worth checking out!

I've got one redundancy drive that protects the other 3 from corruption in a rather clever way!

It's definitely worth giving a go - especially as it's free to try! (I think you can have up to 5 or 6 drives and it will work without a license up until the first time you reboot!)
 
Unraid every single time - as you’ve discovered the hard way, a supported OS that doesn’t require various questionable patches/workarounds and you to play Russian Roulette every time it’s upgraded probably isn’t the best choice for storing your data unless you genuinely don’t care.
 
Thanks folks. Think I'll give it a try. Got 2 new clean drives, so can just install fresh and see what it's like. Is a license roughly £50? Not had a chance to look into it properly but I'll check out that guy on YouTube mentioned above. Think I've read elsewhere about people moving their data from synology to unraid using Linux so need to get some guides on that to. Looks like I'll have a busy few days
 
Licences are based on drive count, 6 drives is $59 and upgrades are cheap if you need more drives. No Linux experience required, you manage unraid from the web interface like your fake synology, create your shares, mount them on your main PC and drag data over. Other quicker and more efficient methods exist, but it depends how much data we’re talking about and how quick you need things to be?
 
Unraid simply because it is legitimate and not a hack. If data carries an element of value then why trust it to a bodge?

Saying that, depending on what you are using it for, a Linux install can do a lot.
 
I’ve had issues with unraid in the past and don’t trust it.

I ran xpenology on a couple of micro servers and never had an issue other than one failed upgrade like you.

Fresh install of the newest version at that time, added disks and it checked the disks and all was back to normal.

Personal preference but if all you need is network shares and no more in depth features, I prefer xpe.
 
crinkleshoes said:
I’ve had issues with unraid in the past and don’t trust it.

I ran xpenology on a couple of micro servers and never had an issue other than one failed upgrade like you.

Fresh install of the newest version at that time, added disks and it checked the disks and all was back to normal.

Personal preference but if all you need is network shares and no more in depth features, I prefer xpe.
Click to expand...

What exactly made you not ‘trust’ unraid? Clearly it must be something pretty awful as by your own admission you have had issues with your dubious synology hack.
 
crinkleshoes said:
Unrecoverable data loss in an enterprise environment on two occasions and slow write performance.
Click to expand...

Wait.... who did what? Unraid isn’t something i’d roll into an ‘enterprise environment’, it isn’t something I can see many actual enterprise environments i’ve worked in accepting for a wide variety of reasons, it’s firmly at the SOHO/SMB/N4P end of things, but as you use the term enterprise and then mention slow writes, i’m assuming whoever deployed this didn’t even do the most basic research before doing so.

Slow writes are par for the course - it’s got to calculate parity in software for every single write and then write the parity as well, so write performance will be slower. That is usually mitigated by a cache drive (now cache pool) and they’ve been a thing for years now, data is then dumped to the array and parity calculated later on.

Data loss should only ever occur from either bad hardware, or user error. Bad hardware could be drive failures greater than the number of parity drives in the pool, a single cache drive failure prior to data being written to the storage pool or general hardware issues. User error tends to be not doing the suggested level of pre-clear passes, using old drives, not putting sufficient parity drives in the parity pool, not bothering with a UPS, not backing up the USB config or using a stick that came free when you attended that conference a while back and is junk or using beta’s rather than stable. Unraid is more suited to WORO workloads, backup/archive work or small scale central file storage. If you chuck a bunch users at it with a modest IO workload, you’ll generally have a pretty horrible time. For general media/archiving/docker/VM use and homelab scenario’s its a genuinely great product. I’ve deployed a fair few in different business’ over the years, most of them had under 10 users and were privately owned, as long as you understand the product and it’s capabilities/weaknesses, it’s useful. I’ve also not lost any data that wasn’t 100% my own fault and trust me, i’ve tried over the years.
 
Hello again,

Ok, after a lot of fiddling I've finally gone down the unRaid route. The fiddling was getting my microserver updated (out of warranty). Took a while to track down how to update it.
Anyway, now have unRaid trial, but I'm a bit confused. I have 2 x3tb drives. What's the best set-up? 1 as parity and the other as the Disk 1? Is this essentially a mirror? Been googling, but bit baffled by some of the scientific responses. It looks like it is. I do have 2 more 2 x3tb drives, but wanted to back upo my backups by swapping out both unRaid drives then chucking these ones in to basically do the same job. Swap drives every few months. Does that make sense or am I better just chucking all the drives in?

Thanks
 
PiKe said:
Chuck them all in and use single disk parity.
Click to expand...
Hoho, sounds like a plan.
Another quick question if I can. If I build the array with just the 2 drives to start (1 party and disk 1. I can start copying over data etc and build my folders. If I then add the other 2 disks, how do they mirror each other? Looking at videos etc it looks like you can split data between disks? I'd rather have them mirrored, or is that all handled by parity? Sorry if this is basic, not come across parity before (unless it goes by another name)
 
JJimmyJ said:
Hoho, sounds like a plan.
Another quick question if I can. If I build the array with just the 2 drives to start (1 party and disk 1. I can start copying over data etc and build my folders. If I then add the other 2 disks, how do they mirror each other? Looking at videos etc it looks like you can split data between disks? I'd rather have them mirrored, or is that all handled by parity? Sorry if this is basic, not come across parity before (unless it goes by another name)
Click to expand...

Default is to split data across disks when the first disk hits 70% capacity. You _could_ use the unBalance plugin to split/distribute data across drives if you wanted, once you've more than 1 drive installed for data, but with the parity disk(s) in play you don't really need to, unless you're going on to split types of files between disks (video on disk 1, music disk 2, photos disk 3 etc).

bremen1874 said:
It’s all parity based. You add the additional drives and let it recalculate. It’s simple enough to do.
Click to expand...

@JJimmyJ exactly as @bremen1874 says... I've added 3 drives (2 data, 1 parity) to my original 4 data, 1 parity pool to give 6 data, 2 parity and you only need to shut down the server, physically connect the disks and then start it up and add them to the array as you see fit. If a data drive fails, the parity drive effectively emulates the contents of the failed drive until you replace it and the parity data is rewritten to the new drive.
 
It doesn't even recalculate, you pre-clear the drives before adding them, then it knows they're zeroed and therefore it doesn't affect the parity calculation.
 
OK, so finally my drives are running. Now my new issue, I can't for the life of me add any user shares! Been googling, but it just seems like a simple click and add, but every time I do it the gui seems like it's doing something, then just resets the page and nothing gets added
It's doing my head in. Hoping it's something simple, but gahhh!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom